The braking of diesel electric locomotives conventionally involves the shunting of the motor terminals with a resistor or bank of resistors. When that is done, the motors, driven by the moving locomotives, act as generators and the current they generate passes through the shunt resistors. The resistor converts the current into heat which in turn must be dissipated. Conventionally the resistor comprises a folded or zigzag strip or strips of resistance material mounted in a metal frame. That strip may be a unitary fan-folded strip, as is shown in Kirilloff et al. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,109,526 and 4,651,124 or a fabricated zigzag strip such as is shown in Harkness U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,125 and 4,654,627.